He Was Smiling

My phone rang and it was my friend who called me. ” Shall we go to Tirupati? even Chaithu will join us with her friend and it is just for a day and we shall return the next day and I shall book the tickets” he said. I paused for a moment to think if I should agree, given the crowd visiting “The Lord “every day( this is much before the covid days)

“you there? answer me quickly” he insisted. I agreed. ” I will share the ticket details once I book.” he said and hanged up the call. 

The day arrived, I left early to reach the boarding point to avoid last moment rush in Bangalore traffic. It was morning 4am when we reached tirupati bus stop. Chaithu and her friend had already informed us that they would walk up the hills, and they left. We both had no plans of walking up the hill(I have walked up the hills once, 3250 steps 9km stretch) so we proceeded to find a place to fresh up and then join the darshan queue after a quick breakfast.

All done, we joined the darshan queue eagerly waiting for his darshan. It was 6 hrs of standing in the queue and people in the crowd were getting restless and so did we. 

The line moved slowly and some of them sat in the way, unable to bear the exhaustion. It made me think, people take so much pain for just one glance of his, not lasting more than 4-5 seconds of time and you will quickly be pushed out of the gate. I was a little nervous thinking will I get to see him properly or what if I get pushed away without getting his darshan? Having been to tirumala couple of times, this was an expected situation given the crowd. 

Finally, we were slowly now approaching closer to the Sanctum Sanctorum, amidst all the loud praises for the Lord and all the devotees pushing each other to not to miss his darshan. My heart was now racing. I started to talk loudly with the Lord(not caring what people would think), while I was still few steps away. ” You have called me here today, so I expect you to give me a good darshan and if you don’t, then that would truly disappoint me.”

May be I sounded like I was ordering, he didn’t mind I guess.. hahaha..

As soon as I got close enough, BOOM!  I was transported to the other world, I was unable to understand what was happening but it was a divine experience. The entire crowd and noise came to stand still, absolute pin drop silence. Only me and THE LORD were present, rest of entire crowd had vanished in to thin air!! IT TYPICALLY LOOKED LIKE THAT VAIKUNTA SHOWN IN MOVIES, THE THICK CLOUDY HAZZY SURROUNDING AND ITS JUST HIM AND ME!!! Nobody touched me, nobody pushed me, I spoke to him to my heart’s content and he just stood there listening to me and smiling, literally!! 

I didn’t want to leave, but I thanked him for giving me the time, I never imagined.  I myself decided to leave since I had got good more than 30 secs time or may be a minute!! Nobody asked me to leave nor did anybody push(they all did not exist at all those moments) when I left, again everything came back to normal, same noise same crowd.

I came out with tears in my eyes, no I wasn’t crying, it was blissful.. neither did I have the exhaustion of standing for 6 hrs straight, it all just disappeared.

This incident is still fresh in my mind, and I wonder how did such a miracle happen? Was I hallucinating or did it really happen??!!